Non-Dual Awareness

"To be nobody but yourself in a world that is doing its best night and day to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human being ever fights and never stop fighting."

Well, I'm still on conference time, so...

I wanted to blog a couple of times during the conference (mostly bitching about what you absolutely should not do when giving a talk), but I haven't yet reached the point where I feel compelled to travel with a technical appendage that would allow me to do that.

I have to say, it's like a drug... being able to soak up and untangle the workings of so many exceptional minds in real-time. I will probably be experiencing withdrawal this week... I did, however, get enough new material/ideas to keep me blogging for a little while longer. I even had a couple of moments when, through a misty haze, I could almost see the solution to a particular problem. (And yes, I know there are many problems. And no, there was no psychedelic usage involved in these insights. ;)

The weird thing about this past week was that I spent the better part of it in a state of dual awareness... (Non-dual awareness is a target state for enlightenment.)

Many times I found myself thinking - 'Oh my God, I know nothing!' Other times it was 'Geez, 75% percent of the people in this room know why that's wrong!'

I found myself thinking about the fact that I exist somewhere between the tenured professor, with the academic background and the scientific skills, and the person who just wants to talk about consciousness because it's 'so damn interesting!' (The fortunate (or unfortunate) thing is that consciousness is a topic that almost everyone thinks about. This means however, that there is a such a diverse range of language and schemes used to describe what people are trying to say (even among the scientists) that it is sometimes difficult to talk to people who do not share your perspective.)

I found myself at various times thinking of my role as a teacher, and at other times, as a student who has much to learn in many areas.

I found myself walking the borders between wanting to participate in the experience and wanting to objectively study it.

The week was full of these types of dual I-don't-know-where-I-belong moments. I should have kept a better list...